12/7/05: Hey everybody this is
Eric calling you from Kathmandu. We had a long trek out from Tengboche,
trekking for a couple of days down the Khumbu Valley. Flew out this afternoon
around 2:00, made it into Kathmandu and have been dealing with some logistics
and just playing around. We just had a great meal with Gopal and Tsering and
Jiban, our trekking agent, and we’re having a good time tonight. It’s been a
great expedition and just want to wrap it up saying thanks to the family and
friends of our expedition members that supported us and all the people
watching the cybercast. Its tough coming into Nepal with small team and
tackling a hug Himalayan peak like Ama Dablam. I believe that Mark did an
excellent job challenging this climb and I look forward to seeing him on
Cho-Oyu in the future. We’re going to wrap it up and say thanks to everybody
and we’ll see you next year. A special thanks to Tsering and Gopal, couldn’t
do it without you guys, this is the Alpine Ascents 2005 Ama Dablam expedition
signing off with the last cybercast of the season.

12/4/05: Hey everybody this is
Eric Larson giving you a report, we left Base Camp today and pulled our tent
stakes and packed up camp. We are down in Tengboche and we are going to start
our trek out of the Khumbu. We had a great expedition on Ama Dablam and Mark
definitely had a great experience on such a beautiful mountain. We’re going to
be going down to Namche and then to Lukla and hopefully getting out to
Kathmandu in the next couple of days. We’ll give you an update if anything
exciting happens in the next couple of days, but right now, pretty cold and
windy and colder temperatures and weather are scheduled to move in, so I think
we ended the expedition at just about the right time. We’ll give you a call
from Kathmandu and let you know what’s going on, this is Eric Larson signing
off.

12/3/05: Hey everybody it’s
Eric and it’s the 3 rd of December. It’s been a long couple of days, but
unfortunately we ran into some technical difficulties and we didn’t really get
a good opportunity to make the summit. Friday we woke up to some high winds
and some lenticular clouds, we decided to pack up camp anyways and start
moving up to Camp III from II. When we were in the gray tower area we ran into
a summit party that was coming down, a party of 6 and they were going around
us, so it took us a while to get through the gray tower, but after that we
made it up to the upper gray tower ice gullies. Unfortunately Mark’s cough was
getting pretty bad and we decided that was going to be our high point. The
rest of the day was spent, another 6 hours spent down climbing and rappelling,
and we spent last night at Camp I. This morning we woke up and ended up
cleaning the rest of the mountain of tents and all of our climbing equipment
and came down to base camp. Unfortunately things like this happen on a big
mountain, it’s a high, technical mountain, with a lot of ice climbing and rock
climbing, one which requires every skill and effort in preparation and Ama
Dablam is a great example of such a mountain. We are going to be resting in
base Camp tomorrow and we’ll give you an update of what our trek out is going
to be. But unfortunately I have to say that we didn’t have a really good
opportunity to summit. Mark’s pretty pleased with what he did get out of the
climb, got a lot of good high altitude technical experience and ice climbing
and got some good ideas of what a Himalayan expedition is all about. We’ll
give you a call tomorrow and let you know what’s going on. Thanks a lot, bye.

12/1/05: Hey everybody, it’s
Eric, We arrived at Camp II around 1:20 this afternoon and luckily the weather
is holding on a little bit, we have some sunshine and are just resting. We
left Camp I around 9:00, so that took about 4 hours, 20 minutes to get to the
technical rock section. We’re looking up above our head right now, towards
camp III and looking through the ice and rock section that we have to travel
through tomorrow. Hopefully, the weather holds up. Clouds are moving in pretty
fast right now and the wind is blowing pretty good. So hopefully we get a good
next couple of days and we can go for it. If we wake up with bad weather
tomorrow, we’ll probably just hang out here at camp II, but most likely we’ll
move to III and we’ll give you an update from Camp III. But everybody is doing
really well and feeling good and psyched to be at Camp II, we’re almost over,
so keep watching the cybercast and we’ll keep adding to it.

11/30/05: Hey everybody this is
Eric larson giving you a call on Wednesday 11/30. It's the last day of
November, moving into the winter season up here. We've had some good wind and
it's starting to die down a little bit and we've moved actually from Base Camp
up to Camp I about an hour and a half ago. Enjoying the last minutes of
sunshine right now at Camp I. Took our time walking up, didn't want to wear
ourselves out at all, so it was about a 5 hour hike up the wand and just
sitting around enjoying some hot drinks right now, hopefully the weather will
cooperate in the next couple of days and we will get a good summit chance. For
us tomorrow, we're going to move from I to Camp II, about 700 vertical feet,
but along a technical ridge, so it should take us about 4-5 hours to get
there. We'll give you an update tomorrow on what's going on, but both Mark and
myself are certainly doing well. Mark has a small Khumbu cough starting, but
we should be able to manage that and hopefully it won't get any worse. Stay
tuned to our cybercast, we'll be doing it daily going up the mountain now, bye
for now.

11/28/05: Hey everybody this is
Eric giving you a call from Ama Dablam’s Base Camp. Today is Monday the 28 th
and we’re just getting ready to nosh the huge dinner that Gopal is going to
fix. The past couple of days we’ve been hanging out acclimatizing up at Camp
I, both myself Mark and Tsering. Did a lot of resting and climbing up there.
The fixed lines are placed well and it looks like most of the route is dry
this year. We’re going to have two nights of rest here in base camp and then
Wednesday, the 30 th, go up and get ready to start our summit push. So
hopefully we get a weather window that allows us to go higher. This is Eric
larson signing off.

11/24/2005: Hey everybody this is Eric larson calling from Base Camp, Ama
Dablam, 2005. Today is the 24 th of November, Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Let’s see, to catch you up with what’s been going on, today we went for an
acclimatization hike up to Camp I and carried a small load, spent most of the
day doing that, and I think that Mark and I are getting used to the altitude
pretty well. It was a long day but we are back in a comfortable base camp and
looking forward to a good meal. Past couple of days: Yesterday we did a bunch
of skills, including rappelling and jumaring and got that covered before we
really go on the fixed lines. Day before that, we had our Puja and Tsering,
our Sherpa, is actually also a lama, and he was the one who guided us through
the Puja. We are going to rest tomorrow and the next day go on up to Camp I
for a couple of nights and sleep. We’ll give you a call after we’ve completed
that and tell you how it went. Thanks for watching the cybercast, this is Eric
Larson signing off.

11/21/2005: Hey everybody,
it’s the 2005 Ama Dablam expedition giving you a call on Monday the 21st. We
just arrived at Base Camp and the weather is looking really good. Gopal and
Tsering did a really great job putting camp up, the past two days and we
walked into a nice warm lunch and large smiles. To catch you up on the past
couple of days, we arrived at Tengboche last Saturday and that afternoon had
an audience with the Lama Geshe and he gave us a blessing and a postcard to
bring up to the summit with us and we’re supposed to actually open it up and
show it to the mountain and it is covered with Tibetan writing that asks the
mountain permission to climb, pretty cool.

Yesterday we did an
acclimatization hike up to Pheriche, we visited the Himalayan Rescue
Association Clinic and then had lunch in Dingboche and came back down, late
afternoon. This morning we woke up and watched runners participating in the
Everest marathon, running down from Base Camp to Namche and those guys would
be traveling over 25 miles in less than 4 hours. Pretty incredible. Everybody
is doing really well here, Mark and I seem to be acclimatizing pretty well and
the weather is holding up pretty good, a little bit of weather yesterday and
some teams did have some difficulty with the summit.

Hopefully, we get a good
weather break in the next couple of weeks and have a warm summit day. Until
then we’ll give you a call in the next couple of days and tell you how we’ve
been doing. Tomorrow we get to look forward to having our Puja ceremony and
the next day we’ll do some skills and carry up to Camp I. Keep watching to
find out what’s next, until then this is Eric Larson signing off.

11/18/2005: Hey everybody
this is Eric Larson calling you on Friday the 18th, Sorry we’ve had some
technical difficulties, but we’ve worked them out. Mark and I are both down in
Deboche, we packed up our yaks, 9 yaks, and Tsering and Gopal helped move our
loads up through Tengboche and everybody is doing pretty good and hopefully we
won’t catch any colds before we get to base camp, which would make the
acclimatization process harder. We’ll be going to Dingboche tomorrow and we’ll
spend two days there and then we’ll head up to base camp. Before we head up to
base camp we’ll look for an audience with Lama Geshe and do some
acclimatization hikes up to Pheriche and over that way. We’ll give you a call
in a couple of days and how base camp is looking and what the weather is
doing. Thanks for watching he cybercast, this is Eric Larson with the 2005 Ama
Dablam cybercast, signing off.

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